If there’s a takeaway from “Deep Breath,” the premiere episode of Doctor Who Series 8, it’s this: Steven Moffat is great at beginnings.

Moffat, the current show runner, has certainly had his share of misses, but the man sure knows how to introduce a new Doctor. He knows the audience isn't sure what to expect from Peter Capaldi, who took over the role from Matt Smith at the end of last year’s Christmas episode. Moffat successfully mines that uncertainty to give us one of the most surprising — and unsettling — moments in recent Doctor Who history when the Doctor, fleeing the nefarious clutches of evil robots, abandons his companion.

It’s a great bit of drama, even if the shock is fleeting. This is Doctor Who, after all, not The Walking Dead. Of course, Clara Oswald — and the actress playing her, Jenna Coleman — isn’t about to leave the show abruptly, so we’re pretty confident things will turn out okay.

Nonetheless, the scene definitely sets a tone. The touchy-feely “who’s got a crush on who?” atmosphere of the Matt Smith era is gone, replaced with something a little more distant, possibly a little more cold. Capaldi’s Doctor isn’t fully baked for most of the episode, but you definitely get the sense they added an extra cup of eccentricity to the recipe.

That unpredictability is on full display from minute one, which begins with a T. rex rampage in Victorian London. This attracts the attentions of the recurring Paternoster Gang — the “Silurian” Madame Vastra, her wife Jenny and the comical Sontaran Strax. Before anyone has time to put forward a hypothesis about the dinosaur’s presence, it vomits the TARDIS onto the river shoreline.

Clearly, there have been some events since the end of the last episode, but as it turns out, scant few. After Strax coaxes the Doctor and Clara out of the TARDIS, we quickly learn he and Clara crashed into prehistoric times just long enough to get swallowed by the T. rex. One time-jump later, and you’ve got a dinosaur wading through the Thames.

That’s not the most pressing problem, though, because the Doctor, freshly regenerated, is a crackling ball of manic uncertainty, not to mention witty dialogue. Capaldi has his powerful stare set to maximum for the first 10 minutes while moving about, well, like a crazy man, accurately conveying (probably) what it would be like to have your brain re-wire itself.

Madame Vastra, one of the "Paternoster Gang," returns to Doctor Who in "Deep Breath."

Image: BBC America

Mystery man

When the credits roll, fans are treated to yet another new title sequence (the previous one has only been around since Christmas 2012). It’s quite different from any other in the series, filled with surrealist imagery that suggests both wonderment and time travel — in other words, pretty much perfect for this show. The music is different, too, bringing back the “drumbeat” at the beginning (yay!) and synthesized horns reminiscent of the Sixth Doctor’s theme (the only thing good about that particular title sequence).

Back at Vastra's home, the Doctor’s friends try to convince him to get some rest — only he’s not having it. The Doctor’s still in an amped-up state, expressing confusion and amazement about himself, his companions and his surroundings (“A room just for sleeping? What do you do when you’re awake?”). Just when you think Moffat might be overdoing it, Vastra telepathically links to the Doctor to persuade him to sleep.

With Capaldi temporarily rendered a prop, the pace abruptly slows. Clara wonders aloud about how the Doctor’s face could have lines and gray hair since his whole body is brand new — asking a question fans have silently asked for decades. It’s not just a throwaway either — the episode makes reference to the Doctor’s abrupt “aging” several times. It seems we’ll finally learn this season where the Doctor’s new faces come from.

This being Doctor Who, there’s also a menace afoot, and we get our first taste of it as a couple of Victorian gentlemen stare at the T. rex still wandering up and down the Thames, kept there by some kind of “cage” devices supplied by Vastra. (Never mind why the history books make no mention of a giant dinosaur on the loose in London in the 1800s — the show stopped caring about that sort of thing long ago.)

It turns out that one of the men isn’t a man at all, but some kind of cyborg. It grabs and kills the other man, ostensibly to harvest his eyes to use for itself. Evil…and gross.

Finally given some time to think about what’s happened to the Doctor, Clara talks to Vastra. The conversation quickly turns heated when Vastra suggests Clara is superficial for missing her younger, prettier Doctor. Clara is offended by the suggestion and says she never thought of the Doctor as her boyfriend — that her concern is for a treasured friendship that’s now in flux, not a soured (non-)romance. It’s a decent moment, though it comes across a bit contrived. In any case, Vastra and Clara make up and come away understanding each other a little better.

Trouble with the T. Rex

The Doctor wakes up. After writing a lot of math all over the walls like something out of the mediocre Jim Carrey movie The Number 23 (which is never explained) he goes to the roof check out the dinosaur. He shouts promises to return it home just in time to watch it spontaneously combust.

He races to the scene, with the gang not far behind. It’s incredibly sad, and just when you’re assuming it was the frightened London populace who did the cruel deed, the Doctor gets everyone on the right track by asking if there have been any similar “murders.” It turns out there have been, Vastra says, which is all the Doctor needs to hear to dive into the river and start investigating, albeit on his own.

Clara and the gang do, too, although with no leads apart from a man (perhaps cyborg?) in the distance who seemed strangely unmoved by the burning dinosaur, they turn in for the night.

That gives Strax lots of opportunity to do his job, which on paper is to serve as Vastra’s butler and be muscle, but is actually to provide comic relief. He scans Clara — who has, in a moment of apt nostalgia, donned a Victorian dress befitting her splintered self from “The Snowmen” — with some kind of Sontaran medical thingie, leading to lots of extraneous dialogue that’s either terribly funny or terribly stupid, depending on who you ask.

Jenna Coleman stars as Clara Oswald in the Doctor Who episode "Deep Breath."

In a pivotal scene — the only one that Capaldi carries completely — The Doctor, still in a post-regeneration fog but starting to gel, wanders into an alley and has a very one-sided conversation with a bum. Good jokes are made about his Scottish accent and eyebrows, but more important it’s here that Capaldi takes proper command of the role without the rampant mania or yelling from the previous scenes. The characters compulsion to do what’s right successfully merges with Capaldi’s intensity, and we finally “see” the Twelfth Doctor for the first time.

Meanwhile, Vastra’s investigation of the combustion deaths is progressing, but stalling. Of course, it’s now that a mysterious plot device moves things forward: Someone has taken out an ad in the Times citing the “Impossible Girl” and suggesting a lunch meeting. Clara, knowing a message from the Doctor when she sees one, goes to the restaurant.

Dating in time

What happens next is one of the strangest first dates in TV history. Shortly after Clara arrives at “Mancini’s,” the Doctor makes an appearance at her table the same way Batman would — silently and suddenly. He’s now wearing the bum’s terrible-smelling coat (the result of a barter), and a lot of amusing dialogue occurs thanks to a misunderstanding: Both Clara and the Doctor believed the other person placed the ad.

Clara gets to know the new Doctor at Mancini's restaurant in London, where the customers are the ones on the menu.

Before they can start considering who did, the Doctor notices something strange about all the other patrons. No one is actually eating— or breathing. When the two get up to leave, everyone else stands up to confront them. They sit back down, are scanned by a waiter for useful body parts, then the booth they were sitting in instantly entraps them with metal restraints and descends into some kind of dungeon.

The Doctor and Clara are brought face to face with the evil that’s afoot, a small army of cyborgs led by the ersatz gentleman we saw earlier, who now has a fresh pair of eyes. Once they free themselves of the restraints (the sonic screwdriver still works!), it’s here where Capaldi’s Doctor shows his true, more alien colors, and leaves Clara to be an unwilling organ donor when the two are inadvertently separated.

It’s worth asking: Why would the Doctor do that? Has he really gone cold? Not so much, since he returns a couple of scenes later to rescue Clara, although not before letting the cyborgs terrify her with an interrogation that involves a welding torch. It appears the Doctor has confidence that his companions can handle themselves, because if they couldn’t they wouldn’t be his companions. It’s a dicey bit of logic, which seems pre-loaded to backfire at some point.

The Doctor confronts the robots… verbally. The leader explains why they killed the T. rex (a body part helped them repair a computer, which makes little to no sense, but whatever) and also reveals they weren’t the ones who put the ad in the paper. Before anyone can say “Wait. What...?” they advance to finally make good on their threats.

Flying toward confrontation

Panic time! Clara activates some kind of signal to summon the gang (that wouldn’t have come in handy earlier?), who descend in dramatic flair from the restaurant having freshly dispatched the cyborgs upstairs. A fight ensues, with the lead cyborg running for an “escape pod” with the Doctor in pursuit.

It turns out the entire restaurant is actually the aforementioned pod, made airborne by a balloon made of... ugh, skin. The Doctor, now alone with the leader cyborg, correctly surmises that he’s a “control node” — disable him, and the others will fall like dominoes.

What comes next is a surprising bit of dialogue, where the Doctor, who has also realized the cyborg in front of him has replaced every single part of itself multiple times (but hasn’t realized it’s a cousin of the clockwork robots from the David Tennant episode “The Girl in the Fireplace”), says there isn’t a trace of its original robot anymore. What does that say about you then, Doctor?

The Doctor confronts the question whether he's really the same man after 2000 years — as well as killer cyborgs — in the Doctor Who episode "Deep Breath."

Image: BBC America

More on that in a minute, because this fight has to have a conclusion, and everyone knows it won’t be the Doctor who loses — even the cyborg. The Doctor opens the door to reveal the London skyline, and the half-mile drop to the ground. The cyborg says it can’t self-terminate; the Doctor says he can’t murder. They both realize one of them is lying.

The next thing we know, all the robots in Mancini’s basement (who were inexplicably doing quite well against the gang and Strax, who even had some kind of laser weapon) shut down, and we see the lead cyborg impaled on a building steeple.

The final end

With the mystery solved and the threat gone, it’s time for goodbyes. After briefly being left in the lurch after the Doctor takes the TARDIS for an initial spin, Clara re-enters the time machine to find a fully regenerated Twelfth Doctor, dressed in some proper clothes. The spend a minute speculating about who put the ad in the paper, and Capaldi asks Clara to re-join him to see the universe as they find out.

She politely refuses, though, and, as if on cue, her phone rings. She exits the TARDIS to take the call — and in a moment shocking to her and the viewers — realizes it’s Matt Smith’s Doctor, calling from the past. Smith makes a true cameo in the episode (it’s not just his voice), speaking from the other line, from a moment in the previous episode after his regeneration was triggered, but before it actually happened, to plead with her to sympathize with the new Doctor, himself.

Smith’s appearance in “Deep Breath” is one of the most emotional in the show’s history. We’ve already said goodbye to him in his regeneration episode, but it was so pre-ordained, the emotions felt a bit hollow, like going through the motions when someone expects you to react a certain way. Here, with Clara, we really feel the sadness of losing him, again and for the last time. You were one of the great ones, Matt.

Clara hangs up, and it’s over. But not before she processes the message: This is still her friend (not her boyfriend, as he makes clear, mostly to himself), standing before her. And he’s scared. He needs her now more than ever. They hug, she thanks him for phoning, and they head out in search of... the nearest coffee shop.

We're not done yet, though. The evil cyborg leader wakes up but not on the steeple — he's in a beautiful garden, and his host is a lovely woman who coincidentally refers to the Doctor as her boyfriend. She tells the cyborg that he's finally reached the fabled promised land he was seeking. The woman dances as the cyborg takes in what he sees, while he — and the audience — consider whether his soul has reached some kind of robot afterlife or if he's just been repaired for this woman's unknown purposes. Tease over.

One “Deep Breath” later and Doctor Who is on solid footing again. Moffat’s theme of renewal vs. replacement resonates extremely well, and he pulls it off with just enough story to hold it together (more than he usually delivers). Smith’s cameo is one for the books, and the stage is set for a new, more alien Doctor. Something tells me the Daleks, who make their return next week, won’t have an easier time with this one.

Peter Capaldi as the Doctor in "Doctor Who."

12 Most Essential Episodes of 'Doctor Who'

Rose

The episode that introduced a whole new generation to Doctor Who is amazingly well paced. Ordinary shopgirl Rose Tyler is slowly pulled into the exciting, fantastical world of the Doctor to help him battle evil mannequins controlled by something even more fearsome. "Rose" fully captures the wondrous appeal of traveling with the Doctor while serving up Who's best monster archetype: an ordinary object turned homicidal.

Dalek

The Daleks are the undisputed champions of Doctor Who monsters, and this episode reminds us why by showing how dangerous just one of them can be. It's the plotting human mastermind that's keeping the Dalek prisoner who steals the show, however, inspiring some of the Doctor's best-ever dialogue in this thrilling masterpiece.

The Christmas Invasion

Regeneration? What's that? Find out along with the Doctor's friends what it means to have everything you thought you knew about someone suddenly change. "The Christmas Invasion" is a major turning point for the show, and not just because the Doctor has a new face -- it's the beginning of a new era in how the Earth deals with threats. As serious as all that sounds, the show's first Christmas special is actually quite merry.

The Girl in the Fireplace

You could argue that other stories used time travel as a plot device better than "The Girl in the Fireplace," but nothing has done it with more heart. A crippled starship opens a doorway through time that endangers a French girl, and the Doctor becomes an influence throughout her life in order to save her. But doorways swing both ways...

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday

The Doctor's greatest enemies are at their most formidable in this corker of a season finale. The guest cast is outstanding, and several story arcs conclude in epic fashion. If you thought "The Girl in the Fireplace" made you cry, you have no idea.

Blink

Forget Doctor Who -- "Blink" is one of the best episodes of science-fiction TV ever made. Introducing one of the most genuinely frightening monsters of all time, the Weeping Angels, "Blink" expertly blends great characters, tangled time travel and tense set pieces to weave a story so compelling you forget the Doctor's barely in it!

Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords

What if the Doctor lost? The show finally answers that question in this fantastic trilogy, showing just how far he can fall. If that wasn't enough, John Simm's delightfully diabolical performance as the Master makes this landmark episode a must-see.

The Fires of Pompeii

Don't blink: 12th Doctor-elect Peter Capaldi appears in this episode as a Roman father trying to protect his family from nefarious psychics, contentious Centurions and -- oh yeah -- that volcano. It's also a dramatic reminder of why the Doctor needs friends.

Vincent and the Doctor

Matt Smith's youthful vigor gave the show an opportunity to recapture just how much fun it would be to travel through history, and this episode takes full advantage. Fantastic writing and performances elevate the typical historical-figure-involved-with-aliens story to an emotional level that leaves you cheering by the end.

The Doctor's Wife

Fantasy writer Neil Gaiman's first script for Doctor Who perfectly captures perhaps the most important relationship in the show: the Doctor and his time machine, the TARDIS. It also happens to be a pulse-pounding horror story with a terrifying villain.

A Good Man Goes to War

Here's something we've never quite seen before: The Doctor on the attack. Showrunner Steven Moffat's vision of the show is in full force in this complex tale: the Doctor as ringmaster in a quirky-character circus, with villains and heroes so smart you're constantly guessing which one is five steps ahead of the other.

The Name of the Doctor

Fifty years of adventures, and we still know surprisingly little about the Doctor. This one has some big reveals, not the least of which is the location of his tomb (he's a time traveler, after all). Of course, the events generate more questions, which the upcoming specials promise to address, if not answer. But the best part of "The Name of the Doctor" is how the Doctor's companion finally takes center stage, becoming as much a superhero as he is.

Bonus: City of Death

If you've been won over by the new series, it's worth seeing the classic series at its best. Paris is the setting for this multi-layered yarn involving one-eyed aliens disguised as smooth-talking humans, the beginning of all life on Earth, and a high-tech plan to steal the Mona Lisa -- all seven of them. Douglas Adams' rapid-fire dialogue never falters, and Tom Baker (to many, the only Doctor) is at his absolute best in the role he was born to play.

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